it's all moot isn't it

"Research suggests it is the wealth and inclination of parents, rather than the ability and efforts of the child, that have the most bearing on a child’s educational success today"

^^^ that is the issue that needs to be addressed.

Unless you tackle issues at the parent level, playing about with school structures (which just seems to me to be a battle of political ideology) is just fiddling whilst Rome burns.

That said, what I would like to see one day is for school places to be assigned by complete lottery within each LEA (with publically funded transport to ease the burden on parents with kids at different schools).

Unless and until middle class parents experience the reality of Tabitha and Barnaby being educated alongside and to the same standards as Chantelle and Jaydn, very little is really going to change for the poorer schools and pupils. Make their intakes all truly equal and the parents will help pull the schools up (and vote in governments that properly fund them). At the end of the day, particularly when our kids are involved, most of us are selfish and we will only really care about the school that our kids are at. eg I know that if my kids were chucked into a sinkhole comp then I'd be doing my damnedest to be raising the standards at that school, become a governor, petitioning local MP etc. If a third-to-half of the parents were of the same mindset, you'd get dramatic change.

It's a blunt instrument, and I personally feel there is still a need for specialist schools for the top/bottom 10%, but in terms of levelling it out for the rest of us (and eroding that class divide issue), we need to somehow get away from 'good' schools and 'bad' schools.

The likes of me will always be able to price out those from lower income backgrounds because we can afford the houses in the right catchment areas, and PTAs full of professional/well off families will always raise more money for their schools than PTAs full of lower income families, and pupils at schools stocked with professional/well off families will always be better connected ("oh you're a barrister, can little Archie do a bit of shadowing for you at half term...?") so the problems just get compounded.

Never going to happen though.

Posted By: CWC, Nov 21, 12:47:45